


A Garden on the Mountain

by Saraste



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Assassination Attempt(s), Cabbage Patch Hobbits, Gardening, Hobbit Family Planning Lore, M/M, Mischief, angstinshield, babies grow in the earth, bagginshield, parentshield, seedling babies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-05-31 21:39:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6488347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's spring and there has been an unseasonal late frost. Everything in Bilbo's garden should be fine. It isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Frost in the Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katajainen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katajainen/gifts).



> Beta'd by the best enabler ever, katajainen, who bounced this back and forth with me tonight. Thanks a bunch, dear!
> 
> 'Angstingshield' was a fic tag I just came up today while talking to katajainen and which sparked me to write angsty baggishield. 
> 
> Cabbage patch babies stolen as a consept mostly from Lumelle.

Bilbo was wearied beyond thought, sorrowed past endurance, tried more than he ever should have been.

 

There had been a late frost in his little garden on the mountainside. It had ravaged the special spot which he had tried to keep safe, now that spring had come and had woken the dormant leaves, leaves which were special, precious, more priceless than all the gold in Erebor.

 

His fingers were cold, smeared with soil too frosted for… He did not dare touch the leaves, dreading to find them limp and lifeless beneath his touch, his heart feeling too brittle to withstand such a thing.

 

'Bilbo?'

 

Thorin. Of course. Someone would have alerted him. Called him back from that morning meeting with the quilds. Bilbo could not turn and meet his eye. Could not utter a single word, as his voice was catching in his throat. He stared at the too-small leaves, the frost had been… There _should not have been frost._ There just shouldn't have been. Not this late in the year.

 

His hand was shaking and he did not dare touch… the leaves were all the wrong colour against the rich dark soil. Should have had it inside, but seedlings did not grow inside. Thorin had… But it did not matter now. In his other hand he was clutching the cloth that he had spread over the seedling as an extra protection, fingers twitching convulsively. . It hadn't been where he had left it last night. No. The cloth had been torn aside, rumpled on the ground beside the mound of earth housing his and Thorin's hopes. It had been yanked away with some force, if the one torn leaf now laying on the ground was any indication.

 

'Your clothes will get dirty,' Bilbo said absently as Thorin knelt next to him.

 

He so wanted to touch but daren't. He didn't want to… There was frost on the leaves, there was a sickly colour to them, they were  _dying…_ He couldn't breathe. To be in the presence of such utter disregard for an innocent life, a thing such as this would have been unheard of in the Shire. One didn't touch someone else's seedling, not even the mound of that seedling. It just wasn't done.

 

'I do not care, I heard…'

 

And he saw, he must see, Bilbo knew, and knew that what he saw must not be right. They had talked about this often enough during long winter months, as what they had sown slumbered underneath soil and snow, as they waited for a bloom… as they waited for new life. But now.

 

'There was a frost in the night,' Bilbo said, voice breaking, heart cracking, fingers itching to touch, to _know_ , to…

 

'Please, Bilbo, don't tell me…' Thorin's voice was equally raw, haunted and desperate. Wanting to hear, to be told that all would be well, that Bilbo slumping next to this particular spot of their garden, _their garden_ , extending shaky fingers towards a badly frostbitten leaf would not mean...

 

' _Someone tried to murder our seedling_ ,' Bilbo told him in no uncertain tones, sounding like he would throw whomever responsible over the front gate battlements if he got his hands on them.

 

Thorin gathered Bilbo in his arms, moving, and Bilbo knew when he saw what Bilbo himself had seen coming into the garden that very morning. The smudge pot, intended to keep their seedling warm and safe from deadly frostbite, was overturned. The fire had gone out, the oil spilled to the ground. 

 

'Tell me…tell me they did not succeed…'

 


	2. Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All hope is not lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd once more by the incomparable [katajainen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/katajainen). Thank you sweetie!*hug* I'm kinda tickled that you're my sounding board and know what I have planned for this fic.

 

 

Bilbo reached and his fingers met the surface of a frost-bitten leaf, touching it with the greatest care imaginable. He closed his eyes as relief flooded him, as his body felt like he could breathe again. Even if _not dead_ didn't mean entirely out of the woods yet.

 

'No,' he gasped out in a gust of relieved air, feeling Thorin's arms around him like a tight vice, 'damaged but not dead. The leaves…' Ohh, the precious leaves which were barely a week old, leaves which had made Thorin smile like Bilbo had never seen before, they were too ravaged by the cold.

 

Bilbo moved his hand, pressing a still shaking hand to soil, palm pressed against the loam and he breathed in, breathed out and… he felt it. And there were tears in his eyes. 'Thank Yavanna they did not succeed.'

 

It was still bad. If all the leaves withered and… the seedling would take longer to bloom and they might... But he needed to stay positive right now, needed to keep his head. He needed to ---

 

There was a commotion behind them and both of them turned, Thorin with his hand on his sword.

 

'We just heard!' Kíli exclaimed. 'What is it, uncle?' Fíli's words followed his brother's, 'Thorin, Bilbo?'. Both were armed to the teeth, seemed like, ready to battle any foe there might be.

 

Thorin looked at them both. 'Treachery of the worst kind.' He added a rough Khuzdul word Bilbo didn't know, but which didn't sound good at all.

 

Fíli approached with measured steps and his eyes fell onto the overturned smudge pot. 'Mahal burn them!' he cursed, eyes falling onto the ravaged leaves, the dirt on Bilbo's hands and the tear-streaks on both their faces. The prince's knifes were shaking in his hands, his face pale in the morning light.

 

Kíli came to stand beside his brother, bow lowered but arrow still nocked on it, eyes huge as he, too, took in the scene before him. 'Is it?...'

 

Bilbo wiped at his eyes, smudging his face with the soil. 'The leaves are… they're dying but the seedling… there's life.'

 

_'There's life,'_ he finally let go and clung to Thorin, pressing his face into his broad comforting shoulder, crying out all his worry, trying not to think about possible long term ill effects. Their seedling was alive. By Durin's Day he would get to hold their child in his arms, he had to believe in that. A child which was still only their seedling, slumbering under rich soil, soil from Bilbo's own garden, as was the custom.

 

They were all silent for the moments it took for the King Under the Mountain and his Consort to compose themselves, for Thorin's eyes were all but dry.

 

Bilbo almost cried again when he looked at the lonely little leaf, laying torn from the seedling over the soil of the mound. It has withered and brown now and the leaves still left on the seedling would not recover. But there would be new leaves and they would _not_ be harmed if Bilbo had anything to say about it!

 

Thorin tried to get him to sit up but Bilbo wouldn't. Couldn't. 'No,' he said, 'I can't. Not yet.'

 

He needed to sit by their little seedling and make sure nothing was amiss, needed to make himself sure.

 

'At least sit on the bench, ghivashel,' Thorin urged, 'this damp cold earth cannot be good for you.' For while the morning was warming the garden now, sun shining almost directly upon it, the earth was still chilly with winter's lingering embrace.

 

Bilbo acquiesced.

 

The bench was near the seedling's mound, in direct line of sight to it, in fact. The princes hovered as Thorin settled Bilbo down.

 

Kíli was by the smudge pot, kneeling to look at it, frowning. The end of Ori's braid nearly touched the oil that had spilled onto the ground. 'There are no footprints clear enough to trace,' the younger prince finally announced.

 

Fíli twirled the twin of the braid Kíli wore between his fingers, looking from his brother to his uncles. 'How would anyone even get in here? They would have needed to risk scaling the walls.'

 

And he was right. The garden was only accessible through the royal apartments The doors of their apartments had guards outside them at all hours. And that's why they had both thought that it was safe, that their seedling was safe. It _had_ been all through the winter and the first week after the first fragile leaf had emerged from dark rich soil. To be greeted with joyous smiles and happiness.

 

But now this.

 

This was the foulest sort of treachery. To attack an innocent, a child. Had Bilbo been carrying their seedling as a babe within his body, what had been done would have been the same as a physical attack on him, to induce a loss.

 

'Underhanded scum,' Kíli growled. He often appeared the joker, but was quick to anger when his loved ones were under threat. He glanced at his brother, the briefest of looks.

 

'Indeed,' Thorin rumbled. 'We need to be posting guards here, too.'

 

'What we need,' Bilbo said, sounding tired even to himself, 'is to set that smudge pot to rights lest the seedling take more of a chill than it already has. Maybe put up a second one, if such can be found.' He had the oddest thought of a babe in the ground, shivering in the cold, reaching out with small hands, begging to be held.

 

It should have been safe!

 

'How would someone think to do something like this?' he asked, looking at the boys and then up at Thorin by his side, comforted beyond belief by the strong arm that the king had around him, mooring him. 'I know dwarflings are precious for having been so few in your years of exile, why would anyone…'

 

'It is someone with a rotten heart and a malicious will,' Fíli said, glowering at the overturned smudge pot which Kíli was now lifting upright. 'This needs new oil,' the younger brother muttered absently.

 

'They have signed their own warrant of execution, doing such a thing to _our bairn_ ' Thorin growled, and Bilbo could not disagree with him.

 

Not even if part of him would have absently liked to have corrected his terms. In the Shire, a seedling wasn't considered a babe before there was a flower bud or two, before that it was just a promise of things to come. Yet most did see a seedling, especially a newly sprouted seedling, as near to a babe as could be.

 

And no-one never, _ever_ , harmed a child.

 


	3. Until Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorin sleeps... and dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the lovely nitpicky katajainen. *hugs* Thanks, dear!

Sometime during the night, Thorin startled awake with sword in hand, ready to strike, defend, cleave down those who would dare think do his babe harm! But it’s only the lads, as he sees in the light of the lantern they're holding.

  


‘I near took your heads off,’ he growled at a them, looking to his side to see if Bilbo had been woken by his outburst, his startled awakening. He hadn't been, luckily. His hobbit needed all the rest that he could get, having fretted through the day, refusing to leave the garden apart from necessities. Which hadn't included food. A sign itself of hisinner turmoil.

  


Thorin’s frazzled consort had taken his meals, and not even all seven of them, in the garden, not straying far from the bench nearby the mound wherein their seedling slumbered in rich Shire-soil. They had made sure that another smudge pot was brought in and the original one had been re-filled with oil and a guard roster had been posted both outside the garden doors and on the ramparts, to guard against any who would scale the walls. A guard inside the garden itself had been suggested but Bilbo had blanched and announced that he would sleep outdoors with the seedling and that would be guard enough. He had seemed quite upset by the prospect and Thorin had let it go. For the moment. He had to admit that the thought had been… he did not trust many near his seedling-bairn at the moment, not after the horrible moments when he had thought all hope lost.

  


‘Sorry, uncle,’ Fíli intoned, speaking in a low voice, ‘we are just checking in. How is he?’

  


Thorin couldn’t quite see in the shifting light of the lantern, but he thought that his heir had nodded towards Bilbo. Who was curled against Thorin’s other side, covered in blankets. The night was chill even where they were slumbering near the smudge pots. Winter was loathe to give way to spring, grasping at the land. But their damaged seedling had been tucked securely and carefully under a cloth and the smudge-pots arranged as near as was practical and safe, under Bilbo’s watchful direction. A third one had been brought in just before they had settled in for the night, courtesy of the lads now standing by Thorin.

  


‘Well enough, at least he’s sleeping, now,’ Thorin replied in a low whisper.

  


‘We’re here to stand guard until dawn,’ Kíli informed him, resolute, ‘so that your kingly self can sleep properly and not be a grump at council tomorrow.’

  


‘We don’t want rumours to spread, for people to take undue notice.’ Fíli was slowly growing into his role as heir. 'And the little one needs all the protection we can give them.'

  


The attack had already reached the rumour-mill, for how could it not, with the extra guard postings, but no official statement had been made. They hadn’t even actually made a formal announcement about the babe in earth itself, as Bilbo had told Thorin that such a thing was not done among his people until the leaves were strong and there was no question that the seedling was viable. And that wouldn't have been until summer, at the very least.

  


Thorin replied nothing, for his throat was tight with emotion. He simply held Bilbo and tried to sleep. Sleep came, eventually, and with it dreams of a tear-stained Bilbo telling him that their child was dead, that the roots had taken too much of a chill.

  


He dreamed of the earthy womb in which his bairn slumbers, of a round-bellied Bilbo being pushed down a flight of stairs and of blood, indescribably small fingers grasping in soil beseechingly, of death and the destruction of their hopes.

  


The king under the mountain woke to sunrise and the chattering of the ravens on the ramparts, and to an embrace full of a sleep-mussed consort.

  


To a seedling which was still alive. To a hope which still remained.


End file.
